Sad, Beautiful, Tragic
by Kayliem1999
Summary: Inspired by Taylor Swift's Sad, Beautiful, It's stupid and pathetic and she hates herself for it, but her heart stops beating in her chest when they tell her what he did. She'd never admit it, not out loud and especially not to herself because doing that would be admitting how much she loved a monster and that was something she wouldn't do. Daisy was a hero and Grant was a monster.


_Long handwritten note deep in your pocket  
Words, how little they mean when you're a little too late  
I stood right by the tracks, your face in a locket  
Good girls, hopeful they'll be and long they will wait_

She felt that stupid letter burning in her pocket. Daisy had opened it, and every day she regretted it. Grant hadn't meant it for her, he had written it to Skye, someone she hadn't been in a long time, but it carried the same weight all the same. She felt every word in her heart, like a bullet to the chest.

It didn't change anything though, he could beg and plead with her all he wanted, but he would never be anything to a monster to her again. Once upon a time, she loved him and for a while she had hope for him, but that was long gone. She couldn't love him anymore, she didn't even know him. Not really, at least, the man she had fallen so carelessly in love with was a cover. When she became Daisy, when she accepted her true nature, all dreams of a future with Grant were abandoned.

This letter, it didn't change anything for her. He was a monster, there was no way around that. But hearing his voice in her head as she read the words over and over again reminded her of just how much she had loved him. But it also ripped open the scars that were almost healed from the initial betrayal.

I'm sorry, he said over and over and over again. Maybe he was actually sorry, but she couldn't argue with the bodies that were piling up. He could apologize all he wanted, but the blood would still be on his hands. You don't understand what my family did to me, he said, but he could only blame so much on his family before he had to start taking the blame for his own actions. Grant Ward was pathetic, too lost to make his own decisions, too dependent to have any morality when it came to taking orders, too crazy to see the error in his ways.

Like a good little girl, she waited for him to come to his senses. Hoped that his love for her was stronger than the toxic mindset he had been shoved into. But she could only wait for so long and Daisy wasn't the type of girl that put her life on hold for boys. Skye might have risked her future for Miles, but Daisy wasn't about to through her life away for a fugitive. She planned to learn from Skye's mistakes, not repeat them.

 _We had a beautiful magic love there  
What a sad beautiful tragic love affair_

And it was pathetic really. Skye had loved him so deeply that she hadn't seen the truth. Her feelings had blinded her so badly that she had failed to see how phony he was. Grant loved her and in some crazy ways, maybe he had spent so much time trying to show her that. All that time he was in the basement, he revealed all of his secrets because he loved her. For a while, she hadn't believed it. Men like that don't love, but he wasn't insane. No, he was something else. He was just a monster by nature, one that she had loved none the less.

Despite what Reyna had believed, Daisy's true nature was not evil. Her gift was beautiful, something that could have been used for destruction which made it all the more rare. She was given a choice, and she picked to be good. The world where the two of them could be together just didn't exist. Ward had been given a choice, embrace the darkness or fight against it. Unlike her, he had stepped into the darkness. He became a monster.

She could love him and he could love her, but the monster in him could not simply stop its blood lust. A love with that much adversity was doomed to fail.  
 _  
In dreams I meet you in warm conversation  
We both wake in lonely beds in different cities_

Much to her dismay, he showed up in her dreams and it was more than just the nightmares. Actually, most times they were pleasant. They were what their future could have been, well, what she had imagined it like. When she woke up, the dreams always left her empty and disappointed as the unfortunate reminder of reality began to sink in.

Grant's callused hands weren't holding her body to his, he fingers not dancing on her arm. She could still smell his sharp cologne and feel his warm breath on the back of her neck.

Other nights, when no dreams came and she lay awake staring at the ceiling of her bunk she wondered where he was. He was somewhere out there, living under SHIELD's radar, which, she realized was probably a good thing. He wasn't out wreaking havoc or raising hell, he was finding his own life.

She wondered if he was thinking about her too, her mind always wondering back to him. She didn't love him, at least, not the man he really was. Daisy had to remind herself that the Grant Ward she loved didn't exist.

 _And time is taking its sweet time erasing you  
And you've got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me_

She couldn't forget him and, god, she wanted to. But there was something in her mind still clinging to him, desperately grasping at the possibility that there was good still in him somewhere. It was childish and pathetic and Daisy hated it, but she wasn't the one holding onto him. No, it was that piece of Skye that she held onto that refused to relinquish its grip on him.

Everywhere she looked, she saw him. Even when the Bus was blown out of the sky she couldn't escape him. Grant was everywhere, he was haunting her in some sick and twisted way that she couldn't simply run away from like she was accustomed to.

 _'Cause we had a beautiful magic love there  
What a sad beautiful tragic love affair_

They had never really had a chance. Maybe if things had been different, maybe if a better man had gotten to him and molded him into something different, something better, they would have been together. Daisy liked to imagine that there was a universe that they could have ended up together, this just wasn't one of them.

They had been together less than a day before things went straight to hell, all the more reason for her to write off love. But she didn't. Coulson, in the way that he protected Audrey at his own expense, that was love. Andrew and Melinda May, despite the battle they faced, would always have something special no matter how much time passed or how much distance she had forced between them. Even her parents, once upon a time, were proof that love wasn't just a lie. Hal had loved her and her mother so much that he became a monster. Her parents were a tragedy and maybe it was written in her destiny to be just like them.

 _Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting  
Silence, this train runs off its tracks  
Kiss me, try to fix it, could you just try to listen?  
Hang up, give up, for the life of us we can't get back_

Grant was train. For a while, he was headed in the wrong direction and then he wasn't on the track at all. He put him on a path that was doomed to fail. She got that letter and it didn't surprise her at all. Hunter, in his attempts to find a ghost, stumbled upon a body with a bullet in its head. One that appeared to be put there by the man himself. Ward had been the one to end it and Daisy or Skye or whoever she was prayed that it was quick. That he didn't suffer long. That there was a bang and the lights were out and that was it.

The letter, the one in her pocket, the one she had read so many times over that the ink was fading, it was sticking out of the pocket on his flannel when Melinda and Hunter found his body. Her name was written on the envelope in his scratchy handwriting. And it wasn't Skye that was written on it, no, it was Daisy.

He did this for her, he said. She was too good to live the same world as a monster like him. The world would keep turning, the sun would rise and the wind would blow. She would save the world, she would become the hero she was destined to become. His love for her could no longer hold her down. That's why he pulled the trigger. __

She didn't love him, no that was impossible, but she cried for days and days. Daisy locked herself in her bunk with the letter and no one saw her.

But one day, after what felt like a week, she was in the mess hall pouring herself a cup of coffee when Mack walked in. And that was that. Daisy was done mourning, well, as far as they knew she was done.

They didn't know that the letter went everywhere with her. They didn't know that Skye was inside of her still screaming at the loss of the man she loved. It was beautiful, in a tragic sort of way.


End file.
